I have covered and written many news stories about deportations of asylum seekers. The last one was from a family that called me pleading if I could find them a lawyer because their appeal was rejected. When the asylum seeker broke the news about the appeal over the phone, a sense of powerlessness overtook me….
Tag: deportations
Deporting an asylum seeker and her child from Finland and ending up in Canada
THE STORY WAS UPDATED W. Che learned of a Palestinian asylum seeker who was deported recently from Finland to Turkey but ended up in Canada. Her son and her came to Finland in 2015. This is her story: “I am a Palestinian woman born in Iraq who applied for asylum in Finland in August 2015…
After Metsälä, Joutseno, Oulu will become Finland’s third immigration removal center
Finland’s third immigration removal center will start operating from the summer of 2019 in the northern city of Oulu, according to YLE. Finland has two detention centers located in the Helsinki neighborhood of Metsälä and in the eastern Finnish town of Joutseno. The new immigration removal center house 30 people. The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri)…
Harith Mana’thar Badr Alsilmawi: Asylum seeker sent from Finland killed in “safe” Iraq
For how long will the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) with the backing of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government continue to maintain that Iraq is a “safe” country to deport asylum seekers? The latest victim of this flawed policy is 33-year-old Harith Mana’thar Badr Alsilmawi, who sought asylum in 2015 and died on Wednesday in Basra. …
An active citizen needs to learn at school about two crucial matters: empathy and social activism
If we look at history and today’s Europe and globally, it becomes clear that most people who went to school that too many never learned about empathy and social activism. A positive example of the latter is Elin Ersson, who refused to take a seat on a flight before they removed an Afghanistan deported asylum seeker off the plane.
Ali’s journey (May 20, 2018): Last full day in Mikkeli, Finland
In the past months, we have followed twenty-one-year-old Ali’s difficult life in Finland as a young asylum seeker.* He’s been detained and sent to the Joutseno immigration center in October for 32 days and again in February for a shorter time.
Deported Somali asylum seeker from Finland allegedly jailed and then released
Migrant Tales has learned that a Somali asylum seeker deported from Finland to the Somali capital Mogadishu was allegedly arrested and then released a few hours after his arrival. He arrived in Somalia on Wednesday at 11 am Finnish time.
Asylum seeker detained at the Joutseno immigration removal center: “I should go to my wife who is pregnant”
In Joutseno, located 20km north of the southeastern Finnish city of Lappeenranta, is Finland’s second immigration removal center after Helsinki’s Metsälä. It is a place where Finland even locks up families with children and where suicides happen. Finland does this because it sees immigration as a threat. This fact is the basis of the country’s oppressive immigration policy, especially towards asylum seekers.
The police officer, and the asylum seeker’s lighter: “I’ll give it back to you in Baghdad”
A twenty-one-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker, who miraculously was saved from deportation twice, told about his last ordeal. He remembers a woman police office in Mikkeli who took his lighter and said she would return it in Baghdad.
Asylum seeker in detention cell 406: “I will be deported on Monday”
The asylum seeker in detention cell 406, who is a twenty-one-year-old Iraqi, said that he’d be deported on Monday, February 26 from Finland. “The same woman police officer who said she was going to fly with me to Iraq in October, said that I would be flown back on Monday,” he said by phone. “The…